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Summer Shows: 25 Noteworthy Exhibitions Feature Black Artists

THIS SUMMER, MAJOR CITIES are presenting major exhibitions featuring the work of important African American artists. In greater Detroit, Nick Cave (shown above) is staging pop-up performances showcasing his mesmerizing Soundsuits in conjunction with a museum exhibition at the Cranbrook Art Museum, his first in Michigan. In New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem is mounting the first solo museum exhibition of veteran painter Stanley Whitney. Baltimore photographer Devin Allen, a novice whose image of police protests landed on the cover of Time magazine, is getting his first-ever exhibition at the city’s Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.

There are offerings in Chicago and London, too. The greatest draw is in Los Angeles where the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is presenting the first major museum retrospective of the late assemblage artist Noah Purifoy, and at the Hammer Museum, after exhibiting around the world, Los Angeles-based abstract artist Mark Bradford is finally getting a solo museum show in his hometown.

The summer months are bringing many other firsts, including Betye Saar‘s exhibition “Still Tickin'” in The Netherlands, her first in Europe. Other shows explore Haitian, Congolese and South African culture. A selection of noteworthy museum and gallery exhibitions follows (many on view through fall):

STANLEY WHITNEY, “In Our Songs” (1996). | via Karma Gallery

Through July 261. STANLEY WHITNEY @ Karma Gallery | New York, N.Y.
This captivating presentation of 1990s works by New York painter Stanley Whitney showcases his expressive abstracts—densely colored, grid-based works. Overlapping with his first solo museum exhibition in New York, which opens at the Studio Museum in Harlem on July 16 (see below), the show includes five large canvases and a wall of dozens of small-scale studies displayed gallery style. Along with the exhibition, Karma has produced a special 400-page cloth-bound book (including limited-edition copies with original drawings on the cover) documenting Whitney’s practice over the past nearly 40 years.

Through Aug. 2, 20152. “FRANK BOWLING: Map Paintings” @ Dallas Museum of Art | Dallas
Born in Guyana, British painter Frank Bowling‘s “Map Series,” an installation of five works (one of which was acquired by the Dallas museum) is on view for the first time since 1971, when it was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. According to the museum, Bowling who “is widely celebrated for his contributions to the field of abstraction and his advocacy of black artists internationally, created a number of paintings in the 1970s characterized by his use of world maps as organizational tools to explore color as its own subject—a recurring theme in his work.”

Through Sept. 13, 20155. “WHITFIELD LOVELL: Deep River @ Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens | Jacksonville, Fla.Whitfield Lovell‘s Conte crayon on wood board portraits bring the past to bear through issues of identity, freedom, history and memory. “Inspired specifically by the legacy of African Americans who fled from slavery, crossing the Tennessee River to freedom during the Civil War,” works in the exhibition span sculpture, works on paper and multimedia, including “Deep River,” a site-specific installation.

LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE, “Any Number of Preoccupations,” 2010 (oil on canvas). | Kenneth Montague/The Wedge Collection, Courtesy of Corvi-Mora London and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Through Sept. 13, 20156. “LYNETTE YIADOM-BOAKYE: Verses After Dusk” @ Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens | London
Tied to no time or place, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye‘s subjects leap from her mind, composite figures that she renders with confident strokes and intense color palettes. Despite their timelessness, the British artist’s masterful portraits are making an important contribution to the art historical cannon, broadening the dialogue around black identify and representation. The exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of recent works along with a catalog published to coincide with the show.

Through Sept. 13, 20157. “From Within and Without: The History of Haitian Photography” @ NSU Art Museum | Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Described as the first comprehensive museum survey of photography in Haiti, this sweeping presentation includes more than 350 images from the late 19th century to the present, as captured by both native and international artists. Featuring documentary, commercial, studio archive and official state photography, along with personal family photographs, the exhibition offers a compelling perspective on Haitian life and how natural disasters and political crises have affected its history and social fabric.

Mark Bradford installs a mural, “Finding Barry,” in the lobby of the Hammer Museum.

Through Sept. 27, 20159. MARK BRADFORD, “Scorched Earth” @ Hammer Museum | Los Angeles
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mark Bradford earned a BFA and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. He lives and works in the Los Angeles and recently co-founded Art + Practice, an art and education foundation in the city’s Leimert Park neighborhood near his studio. Exploring social and political themes, Bradford’s abstract collage paintings have been exhibited around the world, but the Los Angeles native has never had a solo museum show in his hometown. This is his first and features new paintings, a multimedia installation and a major mural in the museum’s lobby.

Through Oct. 11, 201510. “TITUS KAPHAR: The Vesper Project” @ Contemporary Arts Center | Cincinnati
An exploration of race, family and history, Titus Kaphar‘s amazing multi-part installation literally has paintings, furniture and objects jutting from and lodged into the walls of a dilapidated period home. The metaphoric work “is the culmination of a five-year engagement with the lost storylines of the Vespers, a 19th century family who ‘passed’ as a white family in New England even as their mixed heritage made them ‘Negro’ in the eyes of the law.” First presented at Friedman Benda Gallery in New York in 2013, the project is scheduled to tour additional venues through 2016.

Nick Cave’s ambitious new exhibition includes periodic performances around Detroit.

Through October 11, 201511. “NICK CAVE: Here Hear” @ Cranbrook Art Museum | Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
For his first solo show in Michigan, Nick Cave is presenting an ambitious project at the Cranbrook Art Museum that includes performance, exhibition and documentation. An alumni of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, which is outside of Detroit, Cave has been staging pop-up performances around the city since April. At the museum, 30 of his colorful, dynamic and sculptural Soundsuits are on view, along with seven new mixed-media commissions, video work, a site-specific wall tapestry, and a special “Map in Action” gallery will capture the Chicago-based artist’s public performances in Detroit—displaying the Soundsuits worn and featuring video documentation of the activities.

Through October 19, 201512. “GLENN LIGON: Encounters and Collisions” @ Tate Liverpool | LondonGlenn Ligon has assembled his ideal museum, bringing together 45 artists whose work “often deals with the shifting experience of American identity, examining loaded questions around language, power, race, gender and sexuality.” As described by Nottingham Contemporary, where the exhibition originated, the interpretation applies to Ligon’s own work too, which is presented in conversation with contributions by artists with whom he feels an intellectual and creative kinship, including Jackson Pollock, Phillip Guston, Cy Twombly, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, William Eggleston, Bruce Nauman, David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Byron Kim, Chris Ofili, Cady Noland, William Pope.L and Lorna Simpson, among many others.

Through Nov. 15, 201513. BETYE SAAR, “Still Tickin'” @ Museum Het Domein Sittard | The Netherlands
In her first solo museum exhibition in Europe, Betye Saar is presenting works on paper, sculpture and installations. Based in Los Angeles, Saar is known for her assemblage works composed of found objects and African American collectibles. The retrospective explores three major themes that have resonated throughout her practice over the past six decades: nostalgia and memory; mysticism and ritual; and political and racial representation.

Through Nov. 21, 201514. “ZANELE MUHOLI: Isibonelo/Evidence” @ Brooklyn Museum | New York, N.Y.
Both an artist and an activist, South African photographer Zanele Muholi “creates visibility” and gives a voice to the black lesbian and transgender community in her native country. Working in photography, as well as video and installation, her projects have documented same-sex marriage and used first-person accounts to surface the “experience of living in a country that constitutionally protects the rights of LGBTI people but often fails to defend them from targeted violence.” The exhibition, the most comprehensive presentation of Muholi’s practice to date, features 87 works produced between 2007 and 2014.

Through Feb. 14, 201615. “DAVID ADJAYE Selects” @ Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum | New York, N.Y.
Architect David Adjaye is the latest creative to participate in the museum’s Selects series. Born in Tanzania to Ghanaian parents, Adjaye has designed projects around the world. His most ambitious, the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is slated for completion in 2016. For Selects, he has chosen 14 textiles from West and Central Africa. “When invited to explore Cooper Hewitt’s collection, I was immediately drawn to its African textiles, Adjaye writes for the exhibition. “Like architecture, textiles protect, enclose, and communicate the identity of their users. Through color and scale, organization and repetition, their patterns exert power over how we perceive space.” View catalog.

Through Feb. 28, 201616. “NOAH PURIFOY: Junk Dada” @ Los Angeles County Museum of Art | Los Angeles
LACMA is presenting the first major museum retrospective of Noah Purifoy (1917-2004), the Southern California assemblage artist who died under-recognized more than a decade ago. Purifoy was founding director of the Watts Tower Art Center and profoundly influenced artists John Outterbridge, Maren Hassinger, David Hammons, and Senga Nengudi. In the exhibition release, co-curator Franklin Sirmans said: “At the core of Purifoy’s lexicon is the desire to work with or find beauty in what has been discarded—to give new life to an object by changing its context, transforming it from junk to artwork.”

KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, Detail of “Above the Line,” 2015 (hand-painted by a professional sign company). | Photo by Timothy Schenck via The High Line

Through May 31, 201617. KERRY JAMES MARSHALL, “Above the Line” @ The High Line | New York, N.Y.
Black folks are moving on up, high above the High Line, courtesy of Kerry James Marshall who is presenting his first public commission in New York. A number of residential buildings have sprouted up along the High Line, advancing the trend, the Chicago-based artist has envisioned his own innovative housing solution. Adjacent to West 22nd Street, Marshall’s hand-painted mural depicts water tanks re-imagined as luxury condominiums and offers a glimpse inside at domestic scenes featuring his signature black figures with emphatically black skin. According to the High Line, the mural image “is an extension of [Marshall’s] Dailies series, specifically the cartoon strip ‘Rhythm Mastr,’ an epic narrative of the struggle between tradition and modernity within the Afro-diasporic worldview.”

July 11 – Nov. 1, 201519. “Black Like Who?” @ Birmingham Museum of Art | Birmingham, Ala.
Representations of black people have evolved greatly over the course of art history, from very early depictions by others before blacks gained agency to contemporary self reflections and interpretations. Featuring 28 works by 19 artists—both black and white—the exhibition explores how visual perspectives of blackness “have been influenced at particular historical moments by specific political, cultural, and aesthetic interests, as well as the motives and beliefs of the artists.” The works are presented in five categories: “Old Times There Art Not Forgotten: Historical Representations of Race in the South and Beyond”; “Black Like Me: African American Portraits”; “Brown Skin Ladies: Picturing the Black Woman”; “Body and Soul: Rhythmic Representations”; and “From Mammy and Mose to Madison Avenue: Advertising and the Black Image.”

July 11 – Nov. 22, 201520. “Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music, 1965 to Now” @ MCA Chicago | Chicago
Drawing its title from a 1984 book by Chicago jazz critic John Litweiler, “Freedom Principle” considers the intersection of art, music and politics. The exhibition explores the “vibrant legacy” of the 1960s African American avant-garde in the form of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA) and connects it to contemporary art and culture. Featuring an intergenerational slate of artists, the exhibition is amplified by archival materials, audio platforms, a new collaborative opera to be performed live, and a fully illustrated exhibition catalog.

July 11 – Nov. 15, 2015 “21. “Beaute Congo, Congo Kitoko: 1926-2015” @ Foundation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain | Paris
From the birth of modern painting in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the 1920s, this exhibition showcases the nation’s “extraordinary cultural vitality” over nearly a century. With an emphasis on painting, the presentation includes sculpture and photography, as well as comics and music. From the “precursors” who developed Congo’s first works on paper when it was still a Belgian colony to the 1970s “popular painters” who worked as sign painters and created comics, and a new generation of artists that emerged in the 2000s, this unique show offers an historic overview of Congo’s artistic landscape.

July 16, 2015 – Oct. 25, 201522. “STANLEY WHITNEY: Dance the Orange” @ Studio Museum in Harlem | New York
The Studio Museum is presenting Stanley Whitney‘s first solo museum exhibition in New York City—a selection of 29 paintings and works on paper created between 2008 and 2015. A blend of order and irregularity, Whitney’s square-structured abstracts are characterized by a lyrical march of vivid color. A catalog featuring full-color images of Whitney’s work with writings by exhibition curator Lauren Hayes, Lowery Stokes Sims, Robert Storr and museum director Thelma Golden, is being published to coincide with the show.

July 16 – Sept. 12, 201523. “Black Chronicles III: Fifth Pan-African Congress” Presented by Autograph ABP @ Rivington Place | London
Seventy years ago, the Fifth Pan-African Congress gathered in Manchester, England, demanding “that European powers liberate hundreds of millions of Africans living under colonial rule, and passed radical measures condemning imperialism, racial discrimination and capitalism.” W.E.B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah were among those who attended the historic 1945 gathering a few months after World War II concluded. The third installment in Autograph ABP’s Black Chronicles series, the exhibition includes more than 30 photographs by John Deakin presented along with rare documentary materials related to the Congress.

July 17 – Nov. 1, 201524. “CHRIS OFILI: Night and Day” @ Aspen Art Museum | Aspen, Colo.
British artist Chris Ofili‘s first major solo museum exhibition in the United States will be presented at the Aspen Art Museum in five galleries on three floors and survey his entire career. Exploring race and gender issues through cultural and historical references, his vast and varied oeuvre is both provocative and celebratory, melding “figuration, abstraction and decoration.” More than 30 paintings, numerous drawings and several sculptures will be on view. Originating at the New Museum in New York last fall, the exhibition features “The Holy Virgin Mary,” Ofili’s most recognized and most controversial dung painting from the 1990s, which sold at Christie’s London on June 30 for $4.5 million, a record for the artist.

Aug. 18 – Oct. 22, 201525. ROTIMI FAN-KAYODE @ Light Work | Syracuse, N.Y.
“A seminal and highly influential figure in 1980s black British and African contemporary art,” photographer Rotimi Fani-Kayode‘s precisely composed portraits consider the politics of the personal in terms of sexuality and spirituality. Born in Nigeria and raised in Britain, Fani-Kayode died early at age 34. His career was brief but significant, with his most important work produced between 1984 and 1989. A collaboration with Autograph ABP in London, this solo retrospective is particularly relevant given the issues surrounding gay rights and same-sex marriage with which many African countries are currently grappling.

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This is beautiful but I agree with Alma. There is a traveling exhibit of art quilt called And Still We Rise ( race ,culture and visual conversations) with over 60 women artist. It is now in Austin Texas. This is curated by Dr. Caroline Mazloomi. Check it out it is pretty amazing and I am one of the artist. Thanks

Thank you Sylvia. Featuring works by contemporary artists from the Women of Color Quilters Network, “And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations” is on view at the Bullock Museum in Austin, Texas, through Aug. 30, 2015. Learn More

Thank you for your comment.
You share a name with a remarkable black female artist.
The summer list offers just a selection of exhibitions. It is certainly not comprehensive, but it is pretty representative.
The shortage of women reflects an opportunity deficit present in sectors of wider society and a formidable issue in the art community at-large (see recent special report on women in the art world in ARTnews magazine), which is exacerbated when it comes to black artists.
It means that while progress has been made, there is tremendous work to be done.
A few months ago, the CT spring roundup of exhibitions also only included three women artists (out of 28 exhibitions). A couple of the exhibitions were group shows that featured women.
At the conclusion of the spring listing, I solicited readers to contribute additional exhibitions not included, particularly those presenting the work of black women artists that may have eluded my radar. There were no takers.

Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
The problem is big. At times it seems intractable.
Sadly, it is often caused by the effect of white media sculpting our minds, shaping what and how we “see.”
For example, the list above contains two overlapping shows of the major, still under-known painter Stanley Whitney: #1, @ Karma Gallery, and #22, his first solo at the Studio Museum, opening July 16.
But the black performance artist Lorraine O’Grady also had her first solo show at the Studio Museum opening the same day, and it is not mentioned here.
The art historian Steven Nelson has just elaborated on the question “Where Are the Black Women?” in the LA Times. See: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-steven-nelson-museum-shows-by-black-artists-20150715-column.html#page=2
And in Maura Reilly’s symposium “Righting the Balance” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC on October 18, Guerrilla Girl Alma Thomas will speak on this and other difficulties faced by female artists of color .
Thank you for the hard work you do in providing an informative and well-curated blog.

Support Culture Type

Do you enjoy and value Culture Type? Please consider supporting its ongoing production by making a donation. Culture Type is an editorially independent solo project that requires countless hours and expense to research, report, write, and produce. To help sustain it, make a one-time donation or sign up for a recurring monthly contribution. It only takes a minute. Many Thanks for your support.

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